As Mandy and I prepare to leave on Sunday for the trip of my life to the Masters I started to think about my obsession and when it started and the results of it. One of the things that came to mind was "the spreadsheet". Most probably know that I'm an individual who is pretty anal and likes to be organized so it should be no surprise that I use an Excel spreadsheet to track purchases and prices of the Masters items I see come across ebay. I remember when the spreadsheet started out with only one tab for the Masters annuals that I saw sold on ebay. I would keep track of selling price, bids, date sold, shipping cost, starting bid, buyer. All of this so I could wait for the book to be at a reasonable price for me to buy. I wanted to be a smart buyer. I came to realize that there could be some money made on ebay because of people listing things incorrectly. So as I started to work on my collection of Masters annuals (published from 1978 through 2008 and each year after) I ended up buying duplicates to sell and make a profit. From this point on the spreadsheet took on a life of it's own. I started keeping track of the badges each year and then started a new tab that was titled "Other stuff." I put everything else interesting in this tab. I now buy and sell things on ebay and keep some of the more rare items for our golf room.
You may be laughing at this point and thinking that I'm a complete dork, but this dork has made several thousand dollars of profit from buying and selling on ebay.......oh wait I forgot about the cost of the other items that I keep. Either way it's something I love to do. The spreadsheet has grown into a huge workbook (11MB) with formulas and even it's own Income Statement with revenue, cost of goods sold and net income. I'll be filing my 10K soon with the SEC. Ok maybe not....but really, it does have and income statement! Why do I write about this obsession of mine and subject myself to the ridicule to come from family and friends....I'm not sure.
